The price of a PS3, Xbox 360 and even the Wii has to drop if it is to appeal to the mass market, according to an industry expert.

Activision's chief executive Bobby Kotick said that he believed that all next-gen consoles, be it Wii, PS3, or Xbox 360, must drop to £100 within the next two years in order to appeal to the mass market.

Kotick is a big fan on the Nintendo Wii in as far as saying that the company got right setting the price of the console cheaper than the others while concentrating on game play rather than fancy graphics.

"The Wii at its price point is now setting a standard and an expectation, and people say, well, the Wii is less complex technically. I don't think that really matters as much to the consumer," Kotick told the Reuters Media Summit in New York.Kotick said that the important price point where consoles gain mass adoption was $199 (£100), he added.

"In the next 24 months they all will need to be at that $199 price point, and you can imagine Nintendo will be down to the $129 price point over the next few years," he said.

Kotick added that his company's company's competitors were "doing a lot more talking about how they're organized than innovating for the Wii and if (publishers) are going to be successful they are going to have to step up to the level of innovation that Nintendo has proven themselves capable of."

We here at Absolute Gadget do hope that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are listening, we would welcome the opportunity of buying a cheap console (mainly because none of them will send us a free one!)